ABSTRACT
Witnessing is a communicative practice that facilitates the relay of information about previously indeterminate events. This chapter explains how witnessing as a mode of seeing has become a political practice by which human rights activists legitimize their claims. Mapping the shift away from witnessing of to witnessing for in human rights activism, the chapter argues that the power of witnessing as a mechanism for social change draws from its entanglement with images, which navigate the evidentiary and emotional terrains simultaneously. Witnessing helps generate knowledge about an event. Witnessing, then, designates the performance of the act of seeing through which facts about an event can be established. The chapter surveys the purchase of witnessing to human rights activism. It highlights the shift away from witnessing of an event to witnessing for a purpose as a strategy for political involvement.
